All posts tagged participation

A Learning Network for Berlin

by thornet on May 18, 2012 in berlin, digital culture, Mozilla, participation with 3 Comments

There’s a long road ahead to bring Europe’s “start-up darling” Berlin up to par with learning & and the web. Digital literacy and simple computational competencies are often lacking; and there’s no indication yet that Berlin schools will step to fill the gap.*

There’s an important “out of school” role to play with Berlin’s tech-savvy communities and hackerspaces, together with an existing network of media centers and educational activists.

To get closer to a vision of what this could look like, 10 educators, tech community members, and activists met on Wednesday at St. Oberholz for a community brainstorm.

The goal: to map current digital literacy needs & offerings in the city, and to scope possible next steps for a learning network in Berlin.

Connected Learning

One of theories of change driving this discussion is connected learning.

Pioneered by UC Irvine researcher Mimi Ito and the MacArthur Foundation, connected learning is about re-imagining education in the information age. It leverages today’s technologies to meet youth at their interests and passions, realized through hands-on production, shared purpose and open networks.

I personally find this model very promising, as it centers on:

actively producing, creating, experimenting and designing
valuing the interests of young people to steer their learning
cross-generational collaboration
harnessing peer culture
linking the school, home and local community in an open network
and honoring academic achievements.

While the steps we are taking now are small, there are a number of successful learning networks to draw inspiration and mentoring from. Among them Hive NYC and Hive Chicago, as well other models at work in Pittsburgh and other cities.

Berlin: a network for making & learning together

What could such a network look like in Berlin?

Imagine:

Visit the Pergamon Museum and get an introduction to new methods in archeology and how to scan for objects underground.
After unearthing a digital file of a buried statue from the museum’s learning center, you head to Open Design City, where you pick up the basics of 3D scanning and printing. You print off a copy of the statue based on the museum’s files.
Your class had a workshop earlier that year in the Wikimedia Germany community space. So you know the basics of wiki-editing and online research. After digging through articles, you pull up an ancient inscription to go with your statue.
Go around the corner to lasernlasern, who helps you etch the inscription into the statue using lasers.
You’re really proud of what you made and want to tell the world. The nearest media learning center is a few minutes away. You bring your statue and some photos, and a volunteer helps you set up a blog and a gallery.
They tell you about Coder Dojo, a youth-led initiative to learn code, which has it’s first event in Berlin next week. You sign up, eager to make a game about hunting statues and cracking ancient codes.

Needs & Offerings

At the meet-up, we mapped what we already have to offer and what we need.

It was exciting to see that collectively, we have more to offer than we have needs. Lots of important skills at the table (teaching web development, film-making, media theories, entrepreneurship, and more), as well as connections to subject-matter experts, a nation-wide network of education activists, meeting spaces, hardware, time, and even small funding to get started.

The full list is here, and please feel free to add if you something to offer to the network.

Next steps

We decided we needed to test our thinking by running an event.

An event is a concrete way to 1) try out partnerships, 2) gauge local interest, 3) experiment with the curriculum, and 4) have fun.

Together with Fabian, I’m drafting a lightweight scaffolding for a youth pop-up event this summer. Chris Lawrence from Hive NYC has written an excellent piece about how to run one of these events, from which we’ll certainly borrow many ideas.

If you’re interested in:

Hosting a learning/hacking station (1-3hr, fun small activity that teaches a skill)
Offering a space (large, open space holding 50-100 participants)
Volunteering (the more, the merrier!)
Recruiting young people (We’re old. Where do we find young people in Berlin?)
Spreading the word

Then please join us on June 20 for a planning meeting. Location & time to be determined.

You can follow #hiveberlin for updates and also ping me (@thornet) and Fabian (@fabianmu) with ideas & questions.

For a truly impressive example of a local school thinking in new ways, check out Evangelische Schule Berlin Zentrum.
Images by JonLimCA

Democratic Transport

by thornet on December 14, 2011 in atoms, participation with No comments

A bikeway is a symbol that shows that a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as a citizen on a $30,000 car. — Enrique Peñalosa, former Mayor of Bogata

Urbanized is a documentary by Gary Hustwit about the future of designing cities. A screening was organized last week by @mjays using Gidsy, the “marketplace for authentic experiences”. As my first Gidsy experience, it definitely seems like a fun, easy way to host cool events.

The film was filled with nuggets of wisdom, and some honest quips (“Now, you might not agree with me if you listen to NPR, but I love my backyard and my pool. And Phoenix is not the poster child of sprawl,” retorts an Arizona zoning official. Cut to the New Urbanist Ellen Dunham-Jones: “Sprawl is like pornography. You know it when you see it.“)

I was particularly impressed with Enrique Peñalosa, the former Mayor of Bogata, whose accomplishments included an extensive, modern bus route, bike paths, and restricted raised parking in the city. I’ll have to check with my aunt, a researcher specializing in environmental issues in Colombia, about Peñalosa’s true effectiveness, but in general the politician had a very democratic way of talking about transport.

“There are a lot of important things written in the Constitution. But the right to have a parking space is not one of them.” He smiles.

Buses have priority on our roads. Because if each citizen should have equal claim to public roads, then a bus with 100 people should have 100 times more space than a car with 1 person.

There were many more gems from Peñalosa and others, including an architect of a poor Chilean neighborhood, who advocates for participatory design:

In building these homes for the poor, we faced a decision. Do we put in a water heater or a bath tub? There is not space for both. Many architects and city planners proposed a water heater. But when we asked the residents, 100% of them chose bath tubs. Why? Because they do not have money for the heating bill. This is why participatory design is important.

I encourage you check out Urbanized! A smart film with inspiring ideas and an impressive look at cities around the globe.

Image courtesy Swiss Dots Ltd.

Why do you participate?

by thornet on July 24, 2011 in participation with 2 Comments

Prompted by a filmmaker’s uninspiring suggestion to “crowdsource” footage, we had a good round of spontaneous chatter at ODC about: what motivates you to participate?

Given how participation is now the metric driving all Mozilla Foundation projects, the topic of motiviation certainly deserves some reflection. Everyday we’re all bombarded with requests and invitations to “participate, / contribute / help” one initiative or another. Of course we all would like to do more, but there are limits, and there are filters and triggers that help us decide where to dedicate our time.

The great thing about the discussion we had at ODC is that for a group of people that identifies itself as a community of practice, there was such an array of motivations for contributing to that community. And I suppose it’s this heterogeneity within a tribe that makes you feel like you belong, with all your eccentricities, yet also allows you to be pleasantly surprised and interested in the cast of other characters working together.

A sampling of why people in the room participate:

Part of a bigger whole. To play a role in shaping a larger effort you believe in.
To help others. And to follow your contribution to see how it helped someone succeed.
Feel needed. Handcrafted requests seem to hit targets more often. People like to know why *they* in particular are needed, what is it that they are bringing that is unique and essential — rather than feeling like an invitation is a mass-ask.
Achieve a shared goal. If you want to see something happen, then you’re primed to pitch in to make it possible. I think there’s lots of value in this also framed as “solve a common problem.”
Friends or people you admire are involved. Who doesn’t love hanging out with good people?
Curiosity. Some folks said they dig any opportunity to learn something new, or to level up their skills in a topic of interest.
Nice graphics. One guy flat out admitted that he’s more likely to chip in when the project has a good design and visual identity. Looks can matter — and show how much the project cares about presentation.
Fun. ‘Nuff said.

Not so effective? Some common motivations we didn’t mention at all:

Rewards. Interestingly, many calls for participation offer a reward of some sort (Win an iPad! Have dinner with a star! Earn miles!), but interestingly, no one in the room mentioned that as an incentive that gets them going. Certainly there are successful instances of enticement through money & prizes, but that didn’t seem to be a killer factor.
Competition & games. Despite much hype about the power of games to get people to do all sorts of stuff, none of us said, “Oh yeah, if I got a 4SQ badge for that, I’d do it.” Not saying those point / badge systems can’t work, but just that its absence from the discussion was interesting.

What motivates you to participate? Anything surprising or missing from the ideas above?

I’m curious to follow this thread at Wikimania 2011 as well, where antischokke will facilitate a session on “Incentivizing Engagement“, sharing experiences from Wikimedia Germany and learning from others what is effective is bringing people on board.

Image: Casual Coder by goopymart / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

What makes a great event?

by thornet on June 24, 2011 in events with 1 Comment

Thanks to @cyberdees for pointing out this Quora thread. Some really valuable insights from Robert Scoble on what make a great event and food for thought re: Mozilla Festival and other events in the pipeline. We’ll unpack this at OKCon and Wikimania Haifa.

Scoble:

The quality of the people around me. TED is off the charts on this one. I remember standing in the lobby and getting to talk to Bill Gates while many other interesting geeks, entrepreneurs, movie stars, etc stood nearby.
The quality of the speakers. Panels suck. One or two panels at a conference is OK, more mean the content will be lightweight and that the conference organizer just wanted to get a ton of people onto the program (which works to get a crowd, look at SXSW).
The focus of the content. If I’m trying to learn, say, Ruby on Rails, I might pay to attend a conference on that. But if they start talking about Objective C I will feel that the value is less than it could have been.
The small details. Is there enough coffee? Is the signage clear? Is the room air the right temperature? Is the food great and plentiful? Are seats comfortable? Is there power and good wifi?
The expo hall. Is it packed with interesting vendors, or is it sparse?
Does it nail something about the time it happens? For instance, this year the iPad is taking off, so having an iPad developer conference is going to be way more interesting than attending a Windows developer conference.
Is there a community that it exposes or helps form? Other answers mention this, but do you see people hanging together at evening events, or during lunch, or does everyone just go home?
Was there at least one speech that just inspires? The real key, I’ve found, is to have that speech be the first one. Then the conference will seem magical.
Is there real, significant, news discussed? When I’m at a conference where there is real, significant, news revealed it always is easier to talk about with other people.
Does it start, or expose, a movement? Maker Faire, for instance, gets 70,000 people to a fairgrounds to share their love of making things. That’s one of my favorite events because you are able to learn, hang out with, and share with people your own love of that topic/movement.
Does it get you away from work? The best events make you travel or make you get away from work. TED, for instance, makes it impossible to sit in the front row and use a device. I’ve found that really helps build a common memorable experience.
Does it end with a bang? The best events end with a great speech, or some other event to send you on your way. Research shows that the last experience you have is the most memorable one. That said, I find if you don’t start with a great speaker the whole event won’t go well, so don’t put your best speaker at the end.
Do they do something “beyond?” Most conferences are the same. 18 speeches, two panels, two keynotes, two dinners, etc etc. But TED has music that leads into every session. PopTech does a really cool book. They go beyond the usual.

The most memorable events I’ve had, though, are the ones where I had a small, intimate group of people who had some sort of “event within an event.”

At LeWeb last year Loic had a speaker dinner where he took us to an extraordinary meal. At TED I had dinner with a movie star and an exec from Microsoft. At LIFT we had a speaker weekend with skiing and hotubbing that was extraordinary. At FooCamp I ate apples with my son, the two guys who started Google, and four other people. At SXSW this year I took a bus full of geeks to BBQ for Sunday afternoon.

These are the experiences that make an event magical. Can you scale them to all participants? No, but you can make intimate experiences available to all. LIFT always has a fondue dinner in Geneva for all participants which is quite fun.

Anyway, watch http://plancast.com and ask yourself “why do certain events get popular?” Invariably the popular ones are ones that nailed all the stuff above.